


Stop All the Clocks

by Sholio



Category: The Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Aging, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:36:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one who knew him was surprised that the Duke of Kernsburgh, on his deathbed, set about industriously organizing his own death. (There's no actual death in this story, hence the lack of warnings, but the potential deaths of various characters are talked about a lot. Set some 25 years after the past parts of <i>The Crown of Dalemark</i>; major book spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop All the Clocks

**Author's Note:**

> _Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone._  
>  _Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,_  
>  _Silence the pianos and with muffled drum_  
>  _Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come._  
>  \- W.H. Auden, _Funeral Blues_

No one who knew him was surprised that the Duke of Kernsburgh, on his deathbed, set about industriously organizing his own death.

It was hard to recognize his room as a sickroom, in fact, with all of the clerks bustling in and out carrying property deeds, legal paperwork for laws yet unsigned, and all manner of bequeaths and bequests. Navis, propped on pillows and surrounded by a chaos of lawmen, law-women, and palace functionaries, swam in his element like a fish through water, even if he was ice-pale and too weak to move more than his hands.

"This is quite ridiculous, the way you're carrying on," Hildrida announced from the doorway, arms crossed and face a cool mask. She didn't look anything like her real age, with every gray streak in her hair scrupulously blacked out and her face barely lined except for a deep, well-worn crease between her brows. "You know how your health is. You're going to work yourself into a .... a _condition_."

"I'm already in a condition, my dear," Navis said calmly. "Do you think the Dropwater factories would do for Bridwen's dowry, or should she have something more ... aesthetic? Such as the country estate out by Hannart -- but I wanted to keep that in Ynen's family, since he loves it so."

"Father, she's six years old, so I doubt if she cares either way."

Navis did not seem to be attending. "That harpsichord in the green parlor -- the antique one. Ysolda likes music, doesn't she? Yes, I think that should go to her."

Ysolda was the youngest of Mitt and Biffa's children; she was only four, and her idea of "music" was plunking atonally on the shabby little training cwidders that Moril kept on hand. Certainly she was not going to appreciate a harpsichord that had been rescued from the deceased Earl of Holand's country home after the Holand Uprising, having been in Navis's family since his grandfather's time. Even Moril hated that thing. The harpsichord was massive, ludicrously ornate, and always seemed to be a bit out of tune.

"There is no need to come up with an assignation for every single stick of furniture in the residence!" Hildy protested. "Ynen and I can sort it out after -- oh, _Ammet_ \--" She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, a gesture of frustration she'd unconsciously picked up from her father. Now he even had _her_ going along with this stupidity. What she really wanted to do was make a scene, but after spending the last few months viciously hissing at everyone from the children to the servants for making too much noise around the sickroom, she could hardly shout at him herself without being a flaming _hypocrite_. Overcome, she marched off, indulging in a bit of good old-fashioned stomping because she couldn't help herself. That man was going to drive _her_ into an early grave.

She stormed past Mitt on his way in. From the mud on his boots and the smell of stable, he'd just gotten in from whatever cow-farm couldn't do without the services of the Great Amil _this_ time. Hildy veered to avoid him, but Mitt caught her arm to waylay her. He was one of the only people who dared to bother her when she was in a fury. Even Ynen usually stayed out of her way.

"How is he?" Mitt asked. His face was, as usual, an open book; and as usual, Hildy found this terribly irritating. People had no business going around looking so _emotional._ But he looked dreadfully worried, and the thought wormed slowly into her brain from the deeper, more sensible Navis-like level that Mitt had been looking worried like that a great deal of the time lately, and it wasn't the usual worry about the kingdom that (she knew by way of Biffa) kept him up nights. He was afraid that every time he went out on state business, which was nearly all the time, Navis would die before he got back.

But all of this tangled up in a ball in her chest as it usually did, so she snapped, "Impossible!" and swept off to the kitchens to find a cook to shout at. Someone must be doing _something_ wrong down there.

Mitt looked after her for a minute and then jostled quietly in the flow of clerks and servants coming in and out of Navis's suite until he could lean a shoulder against the doorway and watch for a minute. Almost no one noticed him or seemed to recognize him, which should have been impossible since he was taller than nearly everyone and not precisely unmemorable in the face -- but it was a knack he'd cultivated. Mitt sometimes wondered if it wasn't a lingering touch of Old Ammett, or maybe it was just a leftover from his street-rat days, when not being noticed could be the thing that saved you a kick in the teeth. In any case, as long as he was wearing ordinary clothes and not wearing that stupid flaming crown, he'd perfected the art of skulking around in a crowd as plain ordinary Mitt Alhammittsson rather than the Great Amil.

Some people it never worked on, though, and Navis was one of them. Mitt was well aware Navis knew he was there, but since Navis hadn't acknowledged him yet, Mitt was content to stay out of the way and let the bustle swirl around him.

It didn't work on the kids either, one or another of whom were usually to be found somewhere around Navis's wing of the Palace when any of the families were in residence there. It had come as a surprise to those who were aware of Navis's cool, distant parenting of his own children that he'd turned out to be a doting grandparent, not just to Ynen and Hildy's children, but to the royal children and Moril's collection of war orphans, as well. The children had all known each other since they were tiny and did not seem to realize that not all of them were actually cousins. All of them adored Navis to a degree that their parents found vaguely baffling.

And sure enough, Mitt soon felt a small hand tug on his shirt, and looked down to see the pointed little face of Moril's middle child, Halain. The other two were usually out with their father, wherever Moril's wanderings took him, but Halain had always been prone to frequent illnesses -- the court doctors said it was to do with damage to his lungs from early in life, before Moril had found him and brought him North -- and generally when Moril was on the road Halain could be found either with Brid's family or at the Palace with whichever of his honorary aunts and uncles were there at the time.

Halain whispered something Mitt couldn't hear. Mitt touched his finger to his lips and withdrew into the hallway, where he sat on the edge of a probably expensive display case full of porcelain from the Holy Islands. Halain was too big to lift, at least without insulting the child's dignity, so he leaned against it in a way that looked vaguely familiar. Mitt had to fight to keep a grin off his face when he realized his nephew was emulating Mitt's own casual slouch.

"Uncle," the boy said seriously, "how sick is Grandfather Navis?"

Mitt hesitated. Halain's face twisted in frustration. "No one tells me _anything,"_ he complained. "Aunt Hildy just sends me off to help the stableboys. I'm not a child, Uncle."

This might not be technically accurate, but looking at the boy, Mitt thought that he was probably about the age at which Mitt had been apprenticed to Siriol and was already plotting to die in order to avenge his father. And Halain himself had lived through years of bloody strife and starvation in the troubles still plaguing the South, losing his entire birth family in the process. Hildy, Mitt thought, was sheltering herself more than Halain -- or maybe it was simply that she had grown up around people who believed in shielding children from the harsher truths of the world, at least up to a certain age. Then again, it was clear that no one else around here had bothered to speak plainly to the boy, either. These Northerners!

"He's dying, Halain," Mitt said gently.

He was prepared for an outburst, but instead his nephew nodded gravely. "I thought so. Will he go, when he dies, to live with the Piper and the Weaver and all of them?"

"I don't know," Mitt said. "No one knows that, Halain. The important thing is to have a good life while we're here."

"Did Grandfather have a good life?" Halain asked anxiously.

"Yes," Mitt said firmly. "He's had a good life."

Halain nodded again, and plunged a hand into his pocket. "Aunt Hildy said to go away because the noise was bothering him, but there's lots of noise in there already, and I want to show him the rail engine that Uncle Ynen sent to me for my railway. Do you think Grandfather would like to see it?"

"I'm sure he would," Mitt said.

Halain scampered ahead of him, and by the time Mitt got there, the boy had climbed up onto the bed and Navis was shooing everyone out. Halain had provided a convenient excuse, Mitt thought; Navis was clearly exhausted. Still, he was not too tired to dutifully admire the tiny model, a perfect replica of the massive, steam-spitting engines that were already becoming commonplace on the rail lines between the bigger towns. 

Halain was building a model of the rail line between Kernsburgh and Dropwater in his room, and spent hours carving tiny trees and houses for it. He'd told Mitt that all the boys were doing it now, which made Mitt look back on the street games of his childhood with a wistfulness even he was aware that time in his life probably didn't deserve.

Those days when he'd run with the hard-eyed street boys seemed so long ago that it might as well be a different world, and Mitt himself a different person. It was all so very long ago. Watching Halain with Navis, it struck him all over again, with a fresh shock that never seemed to dull no matter how many times it hit him, that Navis was _old._ Mitt hadn't noticed it until Eltruda's death two years ago. Up to that point it had seemed that nothing could slow Navis down, but on the loss of Eltruda he'd folded inward, as if the years had caught up with him all at once. 

Still, his eyes were as sharp and sardonic as ever, glittering with private amusement when he caught Mitt's eye while Halain seemed to be working himself up to running back to his room to bring down the entire railway setup to show the adults. Mitt, taking pity on Navis, caught hold of Halain's shoulder and pointed out that he _really_ needed to go down to the stables and show the new toy engine to his best friends, the head groom's children. In a moment he'd dashed off, with no sign of the cough that had left him bedridden just the previous week.

"I think that boy should definitely have a good part of my library," Navis mused. "Those parts of it Ynen hasn't already claimed, of course."

"You do realize it disturbs people when you give all your things away," Mitt said, amused despite himself. He sat on the edge of the bed that Halain had vacated.

Navis raised an eyebrow -- they were considerably more wispy and paler than they used to be, but the expression still had that same way of making Mitt feel about five years old, at least to the extent that he hadn't gotten inured to it over the years. "People will take on about the strangest things. Though I haven't decided which relative should be cursed with that enormous dreadful portrait Eltruda had done of me, the one with the scarlet cape. I need to decide who I like least. Someone on Mother's side, perhaps."

Mitt laughed. "Oh, don't worry about the portrait. We'll hang it in the Palace. Possibly in the reception room, where visitors can't help but see it when they come in."

"I believe that's exactly what she had in mind," Navis said. "One can only hope for one of those legendary severe winters the Northerners like to go on about, the sort where the furniture must be burnt when the wood is all gone. Mitt, if I leave you nothing else, let me give you this one request: if you _must_ burn something in the Palace for warmth, please burn that painting first."

"My word of honor as your King," Mitt promised, putting his hand over his heart.

"I notice that you continue to successfully avoid having any portraits done of yourself," Navis went on, and Mitt froze. "Don't think I don't know why." His gaze sharpened; it was like being speared on a pike. "Not that it's done you much good."

Mitt tried to get a proper look of polite bafflement in place as fast as possible. "I'm sorry?"

Navis waited until a chambermaid had passed in the hall, and when it was evident that she wasn't going to linger to eavesdrop, he said, "Oh come now, do I need to spell it out? Any fool can see you haven't aged a day since you came into your full growth. The only reason why people don't notice is because they see only what they want to see."

Clearly there was no point in lying. His own face betrayed him. "Biffa's the only one who's worked it out so far," Mitt admitted. "But people will notice sooner or later. I ... don't know, yet, what to do about that. Not for certain. The last thing I want is for the Great Amil's legacy to be that of a god-king, and that's exactly what _will_ happen if people begin to pick up that things aren't as they should be. Maybe that stuff was only to be expected in the Adon's time, but this is the modern world and people think differently. That mess with the crown and ring and all of it is bad enough."

Navis smiled slightly. "I know you've made plans. You grow worse all the time at pretending to be stupid. Besides, I've seen the drawings for that ostentatious eyesore you call a tomb."

"If you have better ideas, I've yet to hear them," Mitt said, nettled. "I'd like to at least let Margared reach her majority, not that I _want_ to drop the kingdom into poor Marga's lap, but she seems to have her head on straight, anyway. And she'll have Biffa to help her --"

One of Navis's hands gripped his. There was a surprising amount of strength in his thin, cold fingers.

"Don't," Navis said quietly. "You know what it's like to have kingship thrust upon you when you're barely more than a child yourself. Dalemark seems robust now, with industry coming up and all the old Earldoms falling to heel at last, but that could go to pieces with one bad harvest. It needs a firm hand on the tiller to keep it on course, Mitt -- an experienced hand."

Mitt pulled his hand away and said bitterly, "That's rich coming from someone who pushed the tiller into my hand in the first place. So this is to be my life forever, then? No rest, no retirement, just the Undying King of Dalemark from now 'til Maewen's time?"

"There you go with the stupid act again," Navis said, unbothered by Mitt's outburst. "Those aren't the only two choices -- either you die young and take to the green roads, leaving behind a grieving wife and children, putting a fifteen-year-old girl in charge of your kingdom ... or you rule forever as a minor god? Come, use your brain. I know how much you like to fancy yourself a poor simple boy from the waterfront, but I've seen how skilled you are at making people see the side of yourself that you want them to see. Between the two of you, I'm sure you and Biffa can do a credible job of whitening your hair and giving you a convincing stoop. Live a long life, watch your grandchildren grow up. Do you know," he added in a tone that would have been offhand for anyone except Navis, "how many men would like to be in your place?"

And that brought Mitt to the edge of the thing he couldn't think about. His hand shook, fisted on the edge of the sheet over Navis's wasted legs. Clumsy hands, he thought; big-knuckled workman's hands. Not king's hands. Navis was the one who had the hands of a king, the grace and bearing of a king.

For twenty-five years, he'd fought with Navis and railed against Navis and pushed back at Navis's infuriating polite stubbornness. He'd had Navis at his back against hundreds of enemies; he'd gotten drunk with Navis; he'd made Navis laugh, and was one of the few people who could do so. Navis had stayed up with him on that one terrible night after Hobin's death, when he hadn't slept in three days and had spent half the time yelling at Old Ammett and the other half blaming Navis for everything. And then he'd burst into tears and fallen asleep and slept for a day and a half.

He'd long since stopped going to Navis for advice, at least openly. But Navis's door was always open at any hour of the day or night when Mitt needed it. And Navis always, always told him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear.

_I don't know if I can do this without you._

_I don't WANT to do this without you._

Learning the truth about Al had been terrible. Losing Hobin in the worst of all possible ways had been worse. Most men, Mitt thought, have the misfortune to bury one father. He'd buried two, but he had a feeling the third time was going to be the cruelest yet.

The silence stretched until Navis said, "Could you hand me that book? I could use a little quiet time, and you can get back to whatever business I'm sure Halain pulled you away from. I hardly ever get a chance to read anymore."

The book in question was a fat tome titled _On the Modern History and Practices of Agriculture in Levereth._ Mitt looked at it dubiously, and realized when he picked it up that there was no chance Navis, in his present condition, could hold it up by himself.

"You know," Mitt said, "the longer I stay in here, the longer it'll take all of my ministers to figure out where I've gone. And you know, I've been kind of wanting to learn more about .... modern farming. I could read some of this out loud if you promise not to correct my pronunciation of the names."

"Yes," Navis said in his driest voice, "I'm certain that the farming history of the north coast is a particular interest of yours," but he didn't argue when Mitt opened the book to its silk bookmark.

It was as dreadfully dull as he'd expected. He was struggling through a series of tables comparing barley harvests before and after the introduction of a particular strain imported from Gardale when he looked up and noticed that Navis had fallen asleep.

\-- at least, Mitt _hoped_ he was asleep. He stared at Navis's thin chest until his eyes watered, breaking off only when he was convinced that Navis's chest was indeed still rising and falling, albeit slowly.

But his eyes kept watering, and even when he fiercely looked back at the book, its dense print blurred in and out of focus. Flaming Ammet, Mitt thought, I'm crying over Levereth grain harvests. He dashed at his eyes.

A voice in the back of his head, that was a little like his own and yet not quite, said gently, "You know it won't be long."

"I know," Mitt murmured back to it, his eyes still swimming until the room ran with rainbows. It wasn't just Navis; that was the worst of it. Navis was only the first of a handful of people he really couldn't bear to lose, and he was going to lose all of them, one by one. Biffa, Moril, Ynen ... even his children, in time.

He replaced the bookmark and put the book down, and sat for a few minutes watching Navis sleep before he rose to leave. He didn't see Hildy until he nearly ran into her in the doorway. He wasn't sure how long she'd been there. Not long, he hoped.

"Mitt," she said, wide-eyed, seeing him scrubbing hastily at his face. "Is he --" She broke off, swallowing.

Rather than answering, Mitt said, "Where's Ynen?"

"In the Holy Islands, as usual. Mitt --"

"He's still ..." Mitt couldn't quite decide what he wanted to say. "Here," he settled on. "But I think you should probably send for Ynen."

He was braced for an argument, if only because it seemed to be impossible to have a discussion with Hildy that wasn't an argument these days. She'd mellowed toward him for a long time, especially after he'd married Biffa, but the last few months of Navis's steady but inexorable decline had brought out the sharpest side of her tongue, in a way he hadn't seen in twenty years, even on her worst days with Eltruda.

But instead all she said was, "All right," and then, in a tone of voice rather unlike her, "Mitt, could you write to him on my behalf? I -- I think I want to sit with Father for a while."

Mitt nodded, not quite trusting his voice.

Hildy hesitated, then seemed to come to some internal conclusion, and put her arms around Mitt. She looked as startled by it as he was. Somehow he'd never realized he was so much taller than she was. The top of her head didn't even come up to his chin.

After they'd clung to each other for a minute or two, she let go with the same suddenness. Mitt looked down at her, at the glitter of unshed tears in her eyes and the thinness of her lips which hinted at words unsaid. She'd never gotten along with Navis because they were too much alike; even all those years ago when he'd first met them, Mitt had been able to see that, and had equally been able to see that they adored each other despite it all. He'd wondered, then, why they fought so hard not to show it. All these years later, it was still the same awkward push-pull between them.

"I can sit with you," he offered. "If you like."

Hildy shook her head. "No. I have some sewing to keep me busy."

But in the last glimpse he got of her, she was not sewing; she was sitting, straight-backed, watching her father sleep, with one hand curled over his.

**Author's Note:**

> Their future-history is based on the end notes in _The Crown of Dalemark_ ; hopefully I haven't missed something important, especially when it comes to making up everyone's kids.
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr](http://laylainalaska.tumblr.com/) / [fic announcement journal](http://sholiofic.tumblr.com)


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